Pungent-smelling flower expected to draw crowd

A newly-bloomed, giant Indonesian flower is expected to draw huge crowds to Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens over the next few days with its foul smell.

A 1.33 metre, Titan Arum - or corpse flower - started releasing a pungent stench overnight, which it uses to attract insects.

Senior horticulturist Stephen Bartlett says the first Europeans to find the plant in 1878 in Western Sumatra were afraid of it.

"Initially when it was first described they actually thought it was a man-eater, and that is because it probably smelt of rotten meat and the sheer size of it, and the myth was around for quite a few years," he said.